7 Repurposing a classic Lemming

Berlin Competition Berlin Alexanderplatz

“We really get into the head of an illegal refugee and experience what it is like to arrive in Europe and how to survive”

Burhan Qurbani

Repurposing a classic

Leontine Petit

© Elsbeth Struijk van Bergen

Geoffrey Macnab talks to Leontine Petit, Dutch co-producer of Berlin Alexanderplatz .

Alfred Döblin’s ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ (1929) is aclassic modernist novel from the Weimar era, telling the story of an ordinary man, Franz Biberkopf, trying to stay afloat in a society riven by corruption, violence and political prejudice. The hero, Francis, wants to be agood man and to live honestly but circumstances keep on getting in the way. 2016. “We really get into the head of an illegal refugee and experience what it is like to arrive in Europe and how to survive.”

Lemming had been following the project from the outset. The film had arelatively high budget, around €5 million. Although considerable support was available in Germany itself, Sommerhaus eventually decided to make it as aco-pro and to use support from Eurimages, with Lemming as aminority co-producer.

“I agreed that this is definitely a Eurimages kind of project, both from the type of director and the subject matter. It is about Europe and about the way we deal with migrants.”

“Honoured that wecan be part of such projects”

It was made into amini-series by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1980. Now, acontemporary version, Berlin Alexanderplatz, directed by AfghanGerman auteur Burhan Qurbani, produced by Sommerhaus Filmproduktion and Lemming Film, and sold by Beta Cinema, is screening in Berlinale competition. It is supported by the Film Fund and Production Incentive.

“It’s adifferent approach on Alfred Döblin’s novel, told in the present day from the perspective of arefugee,” Leontine Petit (Lemming Film) says ofQurbani’s 3-hour re-imagining of the story, which she boarded after its pitch at CineMart Petit and her team weren’t just aboard as financial partners. They made astrong creative contribution too. One of the main actors, Nils Verkooijen, is Dutch. “I think he did an amazing job in avery important part,” Petit says of Verkooijen, who plays atransgender character. Dutch technicians were involved in everything from the sound on set to the grading, sound design and the mix.

“They’re always different,” is how Petit (who won the European Co-production Award – Prix Eurimages award in 2016) reflects on her huge range of different projects over the last two decades. “But if we can co-produce with these really outstanding directors (like Burhan Qurbani), I feel almost honoured that we can be part of such projects.”

The Lemming boss adds that it is rare for projects on the scale of Berlin Alexanderplatz to be made in The Netherlands. The advantages of being involved are self-evident: Dutch technicians get to show their talent and work on bigger European films while Petit and her team get to extend their network.

“For us to be part of these projects also means to be on the radar of the sales agents,” Petit highlights one obvious benefit for Lemming when it comes to selling their own projects in the international marketplace. Because of the high profile films which the company has co-produced, she has excellent relations with leading companies like Beta Cinema and Match Factory, who can advise Lemming and even handle their films in the marketplace.

Thanks to the Production Incentive, Lemming can offer serious financial and creative support and will provide between 10 and 20% of the overall budgets. That is why top international filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos, Burhan Qurbani, Franka Potente and Lucrecia Martel are so keen to work with them.

“It is incredibly important that we have the Incentive,” Petit says of the soft money scheme which has helped put the Dutch at the heart of European and international filmmaking.

Minority co-productions in Berlin For co-pro, see Holland

© Samuel Lahu

cultural clashes worldwide. It’s about normal people living in the shadow of anew global economic reality.” Its director “takes us deep into the lives and souls of these Chinese and African characters.”

Geoffrey Macnab checks out the Dutch angle of some of Berlin 2020’s notable titles.

Underlining The Netherlands’ rising status as aco-production partner, the Berlinale this year has a number of films in its programme which were made with Dutch backing.

Berlin-bound titles with an orange tint include Afghan-German director Burhan Qurbani’s Berlin Alexanderplatz in main competition (see page 6), Teboho Edkins’ Lesotho-set Days of Cannibalism and Iranianborn Siamak Etemadi’s Pari, both in Panorama; Uruguyan director Alex Piperno’s magical realist story Window Boy Would Also Like To Have A Submarine in Berlinale Forum and Brazilian director Ana Vaz’s Apiyemiyekî? in Forum Expanded.

In some cases, the Dutch producers have been involved in these projects for many years.

Days Of Cannibalism

“Days of Cannibalism is produced by adear producer friend, so when the project won the Dutch Post-Production Award, there was suddenly this wonderful opportunity to jump in and join on the ride,” Derk-Jan Warrink of Keplerfilm says of the project. He first became aware of the film when it was selected for the L’Atelier in Cannes. He has worked several times before with the French co-producer KinoElektron, and relished the chance to do so again.

“It’s an exploration of the barriers that Chinese face in Africa, and Africans in China,” Warrink explains what drew him to the project. He was intrigued by the “genre bending” way director Teboho Edkins used fictional elements in adocumentary and by the sharpness of his insights about the experiences of those living in both Lesotho and Guangzhou.

Days Of Cannibalism, he says, has “very universal insights about The Post-production Award, given by The Netherlands Film Fund, the Hubert Bals Fund, and The Netherlands Post Production Alliance, enabled Keplerfilm to come on board. Sound and colour grading were completed in The Netherlands.

Dutch outfit Topkapi was introduced to Siamak Etemadi’s Pari by its Greek producer, Konstantinos Kontovrakis, who together with Giorgos Karnavas runs leading Greek production and sales outfit

Heretic (behind such films as Wasted Youth and The Harvesters). The film is supported by the Film Fund and Production Incentive.

“I was intrigued by the fact that the origin of the story is Iranian,” Topkapi’s Frans van Gestel remembers of what drew him to the subject. In the film, an Iranian student in Greece goes missing.

Days of Cannibalism Teboho Edkins Pari Siamak Etemadi Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine Alex Piperno Apiyemiyekî? Ana Vaz

Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine

The student’s parents, devout Muslims, search for their son but they are adrift in awestern culture entirely alien to them. “That’s a good idea for afilm,” the Topkapi boss says of the premise. The fact that there was an established producer like Kontovrakis behind it persuaded the Dutch company to board the project, which had astrong script and an obviously talented director.

As on Berlin Alexanderplatz, the Dutch provided much of the sound expertise (this is afield in which the country currently excels) while also working extensively on the postproduction. “We really built astrong relation with Siamak, the director. We spoke about the sound, we spoke about the music and also about the editing. It is more than just aservice or helping with the financial part. Itis asincere co-production,” Van Gestel says. way that leads into an apartment far away in Montevideo. New Dutch sales company Square Eyes picked up the film just before Berlin.

“Director Alex Piperno and I were actually introduced by Laurette Schillings from Topkapi Films,” says Baldr’s Frank Hoeve of the film which had Netherlands Film Fund and Hubert Bals Fund Co-production Scheme (NFF+HBF) support. “She was not able to co-produce the film and suggested to him to contact me. I immediately saw the original approach by Alex. It is avery unique film about human movement and solitude, moving through distinctphysical and geographical spaces as seen through the eyes of ayoung sailor.” Piperno was writing, directing, producing and editing. Hoeve praises the filmmaker as “very professional and very open to his various co-producers.”

Writer-director Piperno’s Window Boy Would Also Like To Have A Submarine has one of the most distinctive (and longest) titles of any film in Berlin this year. It also has one of the more intriguing storylines: on board acruise ship, asailor discovers ahallOn Window Boy, the VFX was done in The Netherlands while the mix was handled by Vincent Sinceretti at Posta Amsterdam. Hoeve describes features like Window Boy as “a great opportunity for us as producers and Dutch talent to work on unique projects.”

9 Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine (Chico ventana también quisiera tener un submarino) Director & script: Alex Piperno Production: LaPobladora Cine (UY) Co-production: BALDR Film (NL), Pelícano (AR), Desvia (BR), Cinematográfica (PH) Sales: Square Eyes Brazilian director Ana Vaz’s Apiyemiyekî? is screening in Berlin fresh from its appearance in the Tiger Short Film Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam. For Dutch producers De Productie, this is achance to work with ahighly regarded artist and filmmaker on ashort film that looks bound to get wide festival exposure.

Vaz makes use of an archive of drawings from the WaimiriAtroari, an indigenous people from the Brazilian Amazon who use their pictures to make sense of their own devastation and suffering during the time of the military dictatorship “We didn’t know anything about the genocide and napalm situation in

Apiyemiyekî?

Brazil. was really touched by this subject,” says De Productie’s Annemiek van Gorp. She came on board as co-producer late on, in the postproduction phase, and talks about the “beautiful and cinematic way” in which Vaz tackled the delicate subject matter. Now, De Productie hope to work with their Brazilian partners again, on one of their own films which they hope to shoot in Brazil.